…one particular title from the late 1980s made headlines earlier this year. Rebellion, the publisher of 2000AD, announced it was planning to reprint Zenith, Morrison’s subversive superhero strip. Shallow, sarcastic and frequently used as a way for Morrison to criticise the Conservative party, the hero’s five-year run in 2000AD ended in 1992. Zenith has been out of print ever since, due to a legal dispute over who owns the rights. So Rebellion’s announcement of a £100 preorder-only hardback complete collection raised rather a lot of eyebrows, with Morrison unable to comment. But, choosing his words carefully, the writer is now able to talk a little about what’s happening.

“Well, it’s very simple,” he begins with a wince. “We, uh, we spent five grand on lawyers’ fees. They sent [Rebellion] letters. We were very keen to discuss it and we’ve never heard back from them. All I can say is that we tried to get into a discussion with them and they just didn’t reply. I don’t know what to do at this stage.”

[batman] The Killing Joke Ending Revealed? … Grant Morrison has an interesting theory about the conclusion of The Killing Joke … ‘That’s what I love about it- Batman kills the Joker…that’s why it’s called The Killing Joke…The Joker tells the ‘killing joke’ at the end and Batman reaches out and breaks his neck… and that’s why the laughter stops…the light goes out because that was the last chance of crossing that bridge. Alan wrote the ultimate Batman Joker story… because he finished it… the laughter stops, it abruptly stops, it’s quite obvious.’

[comics] I Am NOT the Beastmaster: Morrison in Glasgow … notes from a keynote lecture Grant Morrison gave at the University of Glasgow last month … ‘Morrison argued that shared-universe, corporate-owned superhero stories ought to be generational, circular, and repetitive—since they cannot be brought to an end, writers might as well play up the mythic angle and retell stories for each new generation of readers. One young guest wanted to know what Morrison’s favorite comics from his own catalogue were. (His answers: The Filth, Doom Patrol, and Superman Beyond 3D.)’

[batman] A Reader’s Guide To Grant Morrison’s Batman
… useful guide to Morrison’s recently concluded long run on Batman … ‘If there is one question I’ve answered more than any other in the past few years in regards to Batman, it is “what is the reading order of Grant Morrison’s run”, or some variation thereof. So I have created this list as a permanent resource and answer to that question.’

[comics] MAD MENTAL CRAZY! The True Life of the Fabulous Zenith Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 … a three-part history of the British super-hero Zenith and a look at the murky legal situation regarding ownership of the character … ‘2000 AD maintain that they own the rights while Grant Morrison contends that they do not have the paperwork to prove that. This is not an argument that Morrison had at the time of initial publication, rather one he put forward in later years in greater understanding of the situation, so early interviews with the writer at the time are not entirely illuminating. There are however other pieces of the jigsaw that help build a larger picture. 2000 AD maintain that they have never sought creator owned work and the implication was always that comics were created on a work for hire basis. However, they also operated without contracts in many cases before the early ’90s, and under UK law a creation belongs to the creator until the rights are signed away – regardless of publication or payment.’

Batman from 1938 who’s out there with guns in his hand and he’s fighting vampires and crooks, I thought, well, imagine that’s Batman at 20, you know. And then he meets this kid when he’s 21, and the kid’s this little working class circus kid who’s totally cocky. And this introverted young Norman Bates Batman is suddenly, “Wait a minute. This is the kid that died in me. This is everything that I wanted to be.” And the two become friends, and it’s not creepy. It’s like, “He’s my best friend and my brother and everything I wish I could be.” And the kid’s looking at him like, “He’s everything I wish I could be.”

With comics, the quality now is better than it’s ever been, there are more people now who are really good at what they do, doing what they do. Everything’s available for free, I think that’s the real problem, nobody wants to buy it anymore. One comes out, you see it immediately online and you can read it. That’s the way people want to consume their information, the colors look nicer. I think that’s more the problem, but that’s a problem for everybody, it’s not just for comics, everyone’s going to start feeling that one.’ — Morrison discussing the death-spiral of superhero comic books

[comics] Grant Morrison: My Supergods From The Age Of The Superhero … Grant Morrison Chooses His Favourite Superhero Moments … On Marvelman: ‘There are beautiful sequences where the superheroes are escorting Thatcher out of No 10 and she’s sobbing helplessly: suddenly there’s this new power that bombs can’t stop, weapons can’t stop. The whole last issue is this fabulous liberal fantasy of what the good guys would do if they got in charge and got rid of all the bastards! I like it much more than Watchmen; it was a real triumph for lefties everywhere!’

[comics] Comics Time: Batman and Robin #14 … a review of Grant Morrison’s latest Batman comic. On Frazer Irving’s art: ‘To rely this much on subtle shifts of figurework and coloring to convey both vital plot information and to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the physical combat that is superhero comics’ bread and butter, to have the chops to pull it off and the confidence to even try…well, it’s pretty much unheard of outside of some really titanic stuff, Dave Gibbons on Watchmen/Frank Quitely on All Star Superman-type stuff. And while Irving shares with Quitely a genuine, contemporary sense of style and art that allows for neon-bright colors to really pop, his work (perhaps because he does all the color and texture himself) feels fuller.’

[quote] ‘What’ll it be next? Choice extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Trotting out the Nietzsche and the Shelley to dignify some old costumed claptrap? Probably. Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who’s dreaming who? — Grant Morrison.

Grant Morrison on Brave and the Bold #102:One of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: ‘Yes, Batman digs this day!’

[comics] Counterculture Comics Hero Grant Morrison Gets a Biopic … Wired cover a new documantary about Grant Morrison … ‘Morrison has lived a very full life, from playing in rock bands to experimenting as a transvestite to becoming, like Alan Moore, a chaos magician. There’s a lot of fertile ground in his personality alone, to say nothing of his sometimes autobiographical comics. In the process, Morrison has become a counterculture icon primed for mainstream crossover.’

[music] The Music Of Grant Morrison: Torturted Soul / October … Grant Morrison on vocals with The Fauves … ‘There was talk of some sort of CD of GM related stuff being collected a few years back but I don’t think anything ever came of it. A pity. Anyway, I have no record sleeve scan, so here’s a picture of singer and cat. Meow.’

[comics] Grant Morrison Interview By The Onion A.V. Club … On what appeals to him about comics as a storyteller: … ‘The essentially magical qualities of inert words and ink pictures working together with reader consciousness to create a holographic Sensurround emotional experience. What else?’

One of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: ‘Yes, Batman digs this day!”

[comics] Grant Morrison on Batman and Robin … ‘It’s always important to remember that Gotham isn’t some derelict hellhole, it’s the most larger-than-life, exciting city in the world. It has to be like New York plus or no-one would want to live there, so we’re emphasizing the excitement and color and buzz of the place, as well as its more familiar gloomy and gargoyle-y shadows. Gotham is where Crime becomes Art, after all.’

[comics] Grant Morrison’s Multiversity … interview with Morrison on his new project for DC … ‘ I’ve been working on this way in advance. I have started a lot of the books and I’ve almost finished a couple of them. I really want to do them ahead of time so every little detail is right. I want this to be big. I kind of thought “Final Crisis” would be the big one and then I realized I had to tell this Multiverse one. So this is the real big epic that comes up next.’

[comics] Brendan McCarthy finds a lost Doom Patrol Script from Grant Morrison [Page 1 | Page 2] … ‘I found this DOOM PATROL script the other day that I had doodled all over, from Grant Morrison… It was an episode that Grant wrote for me to draw back in 1991/92 or thereabouts: I asked for an old style DC ‘imaginary story’ with Danny The Street as the central character. But by the time the script turned up, I had to do a film so I couldn’t draw it’ …

‘We know we’ve fucked up the atmosphere and doomed the lovely polar bears and we can’t even summon up the energy to feel guilty anymore. Let the pedophiles have the kids. There’s nowhere left to turn and no one left to blame except, paradoxically, those slightly medieval guys without the industrial base. What’s left to believe in? The only truly moral, truly goodhearted man left is a made-up comic book character! The only secular role models for a progressive, responsible, scientific-rational Enlightenment culture are … Kal-El of Krypton, aka Superman and his multicolored descendants!

So we chose not to deconstruct the superhero but to take him at face value, as a fiction that was trying to tell us something wonderful about ourselves. Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down and that seemed worth investigating.’

[comics] Grant Morrison: Final Crisis Exit Interview [Part 1 | Part 2] … Grant explains everything … ‘Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’? Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?’

[comics] Grant Morrison, Batman and the Superhero Genre … another interview with Grant Morrison … On his recent Batman stories: ‘The big breakthrough for me was when I decided to bring Batman’s entire 70 year history into canon by declaring that ALL of these stories had happened in one man’s incredible life. He’s lost two Robins, seen Batgirl crippled by the Joker, had his back broken and his city devastated! What would the accumulated mental toll of all those years do to even the strongest man? And how would a well-organised and frighteningly-prepared villain attempt to take advantage of that?’

‘In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.’

[comics] Grant Morrison’s Favourite Superman Issues and Moments … On Superman vs. Muhammad Ali: ‘How could you forget that one? Because it had to happen! I had to travel many, many miles to find that comic. I remember getting it and it didn’t quite live up to the hype. But the more and more the years go by, the better that comic gets [because of] the contortions they go through to make sure Ali wins.’

[comics] Final Crisis Annotations … more comics notes from Douglas Wolk who also annotated 52 … ‘Perhaps a less frustrating way to deal with the contradictions is not to try to explain them but to accept them as a pesky but integral part of the story, a sort of continuity koan. Continuity is at least sort of mutable–rarely more explicitly so than in Morrison’s superhero comics. The prolegomenon to FINAL CRISIS is SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE, in which Shilo Norman’s many alternate lives both do and don’t happen. “Hypertime” is one way of putting it; another is to say that all stories are more or less true, but better stories, more satisfying stories, are more true in the long term.’

[comics] Grant Morrison on Final Crisis #1 … ‘The thing is, we wanted to open with a nasty, execution-style death of a superhero as a way of demonstrating how far behind us the Silver Age is. We’re conditioned to expect the hero to fall after a noble struggle or to give his life saving the universe but this had to be different. The scene was very much about calling time on expectations and letting our readers know up front that the rules have changed.’

[comics] US superheroes with Scottish accents… BBC News on Scottish Comics Creators … ‘Along with [Grant] Morrison, the work of some of Scotland’s other great comic book writers and artists has been showcased at an exhibition at the National Library of Scotland. Names such as John Wagner, Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy have dominated the genre in Scotland for decades and have been at the forefront of what Mr Schreck calls “the European invasion” since the late 1970s.’

Many fans had come to like the character better dead than alive after he was disintegrated saving the universe.

“That’s the point of comics – they don’t have to die, because they’re fictional creations,” said Grant Morrison, one of the writers behind the comeback.

“We can do anything with them, and we can make them come back and make them defy death,” Morrison said. “And that’s why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.”

[comics] Transcript of Grant Morrison’s Panel at NYCC ’08 … ‘The lights went down for the presentation, and a screen came up saying “Fuck,’ which then changed to “time,” and the introduction for Morrison, with a slideshow of his work, and a reading of a statement from Morrison about the nature of life and fiction. Morrison came onstage to raucous applause and screamed “Lend me some sugar! I am your neighbor!” And then right away through open the floor to questions…’

[comics] Grant Morrison Interview … this time from the Daily Cross Hatch … ‘This was just the meat and drink of my life—superheroes, fashion, British television, because there was some really great British cult TV from the 60s and 70s, so all of that was influential to me, and I would have put that material out, wherever I found it. So if it’s Superman, I’m trying to think of the character as if he were a British television drama, what he would be like.’ [via ¡Journalista!]

[comics] More on Grant Morrison: Metafilter discuss Final Crisis and Zoids … ‘Holy shit, that Zoids comic is a hilariously Morrisonesque hijacking. Thanks! I had no idea such a thing existed. My favorite part is when Zoidzilla steps through that silvery liquid into the Hyperverse of the Mind…’

[comics] Comic Book resources interviews Grant Morrison on Final Crisis, Batman and All Star Superman … ‘I had sent in a big pitch for something called ‘Hypercrisis’ and it would have included some of the ideas I have about Hypertime and DC’s higher dimensions and such. It was a huge storyline, 12 issues, all number ones to launch new series and all connecting to make one big epic. The first page opened with them all standing at Captain Marvel’s grave and Superman saying, ‘Marvel is dead.’ And that’s how it was going to open…’

[comics] Grant Morrison’s 52 Exit Interview … ‘If it compared to other media at all, 52 was more like a couple of long seasons of a TV show featuring stars you’ve barely heard of. We didn’t have the marquee names or the $100,000,000 budget, so as with, say, Lost or Heroes, we had to engage the audience straight away with characters and story. I think 52 was very human and accessible in that way. In the end it wasn’t about making pseudo-political points or staging yet another huge brawl between superheroes, it was about loss, and love and death and transcendence and the sprawling lives and emotions of people who just happened to have superpowers.’

[comics] A Script Review of Grant Morrison’s We3 — a look at Morrison’s script for New Line Cinema’s adaptation of We3 … ‘Much of the film is a long chase, a blend between one of Disney’s Fantastic Journey films and, perhaps, The Iron Giant by way of Robocop or another hard, gristle-strewn actionaer. It is also a brilliant and incisive exploration of freedom, instinct, will the universe’s natural orders… and the desire to identify yourself as an individual.’

[comics] Interview with Grant Morrison — this one from 1999 … ‘As writers, we have to know what’s going on, because our lives depend on it. Y’know, I get paid by the script. If I don’t do any scripts, my whole life falls apart, we have to keep writing. And we have to keep being aware of what the pop culture is saying. It’s not even a conscious thing, but you’re in there, you know what’s going on, you know what’s going to sell, you know what kids are interested in. And editors don’t, because they’re getting a salary, they don’t have to care. They’re set up, they’ve got their pension funds, so we actually know how the stuff is done. We know what people want.’

[comics] Interview with Grant Morrison from 2004 … ‘This last year after my dad died and my cats died, I felt so bad and so hopeless but I had to acknowledge that I still felt. These feelings are not actually the negative kinds of states that they try to convince you they are. They’re feelings, and they’re all quite sharp and they’re all quite bright and alive. The meaning is that life HURTS in many instances, generally because it implicates us in something desperately precious and fragile and temporary.’ [via Pete’s Linklog]